Tuesday, March 2, 2010

V Was for Victory.... (10)

Politics and American Culture During WWII (10). John Morton Blum. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1976.

Why read it? Perspective from the Home Front in World War II. The effects of American propaganda on the American people. A completely different view of a war from our more recent wars, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Ideas:

“John Hersey on General Marvin modeled on Patton in Bell for Adano: ‘But…General Marvin showed himself during the invasion to be a bad man, something worse than what our troops were trying to throw out.’ ” p. 87.

“Bell [for Adano], Hersey wrote, ‘was the first novel or book of any kind, during the Second World War, to suggest that the American hero…might be a dangerous shit.’ ”

“…it was a lovely war after all, with the fighting remote and prosperity returned.” p. 116.

“The accomplishments of American industry during the war restored much of the prestige that businessmen had lost after 1929.” p. 117.

“ ‘Roberto,’ an acrostic consisting sequential of the first letters of Rome, Berlin and Tokyo, the capital cities of the Axis powers.” p. 147.